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Dear all,
TL;DR: Let's drop package ibus-pinyin from Debian since it implicitly (build- )depends on the unmaintained python2. If we want to save it, considerable amount of work need to be done.
Details on the proposed removal of ibus-pinyin are as follows:
The default pinyin input method for ibus used to be ibus-pinyin[1] and its upstream is
https://github.com/ibus/ibus-pinyin/ . However, in recent years
the development shifts towards the libpinyin project, which provides ibus- libpinyin[2] at
https://github.com/libpinyin/ibus-libpinyin . The old ibus- pinyin package was deprecated but not removed since someone may still prefer
to use it.
However, ibus-pinyin depends on libpyzy[3], a conversion library between
pinyin and bopomofo (a.k.a. zhuyin). This library has a dead upstream at
https://github.com/hsumita/libpyzy , which was exported from googlecode and
has no activity in the last 10 years. This library heavily depends on some python2 scripts.
Now that the ongoing Python2 removal transition[4] is likely to complete
within the Bullseye cycle (you may find a progress chart here[5]), it's likely that the libpyzy library will need to be ported to Python3 or dropped together with ibus-pinyin, perhaps later this year.
I'm wondering if anyone is interested in porting python2 scripts in libpyzy project. I had a really quick glance and have an estimation that it will probably requires 5 hours of porting and another 15 hours of testing to ensure a proper python3 migration if the developer has good experience in Python2->3 porting. Of course, another option is that we completely throw this library as well as ibus-pinyin away.
P.S. I discussed it with the Arch Linux maintainer of ibus-pinyin/pyzy back in 2016 and 2018; the conclusion was to keep it at that time. Things have changed since then.
Let me know if you have any thoughts. Volunteering would be highly welcome.
--
Regards,
Boyuan Yang
[1]
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ibus-pinyin
[2]
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ibus-libpinyin
[3]
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libpyzy
[4]
https://release.debian.org/transitions/html/python2-rm.html
[5]
http://sandrotosi.me/debian/py2removal/py2removal_progress.png
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